How much should I expect to pay for decent all season tires?

[Philpug]

Skip the "all-season" tires. You already have good cold weather tires. Get summer tires. There are parallels with skiing. Think a groomer ski and a soft snow ski, not an all-mountain ski and a powder ski.

She has an Outback, not a WRX, a good high performance All (three) season is fine.

 

[François Pugh]

I would consider this all season for summer: https://www.michelin.ca/CA/en/tires/products/pilot-sport-a-s-3.html
Maybe not the most dry traction, but better than most and very good in the rain and predictable always.

 

[noncrazycanuck]

have the pilot as 3 on the tt I like the extra traction in wet and they are fairly quiet for a high performance tire (it doesn't go out in the snow)
other vehicles we do all season late spring to late fall then winter tires, have been doing same for years. Often have even sold the vehicle with the originals still on . when you alternate 2 sets you get twice as many miles and have the traction when you need it.
better than wearing down one set until it needs to be replaced and in the long term the cost is the same

 

[cantunamunch]

FWIW I don't think the issue @Monique raised above has been properly explored.

What is the current state of the art in rain tires? And how will she know how much rain-specific design she's giving up for a random all seasons / 3 season tire, which will obviously try to meet a more conflicting set of design goals?

 

[scott43]

My philosophy is, as someone else stated, if you have winter tires, buy summer tires, not all season. Unless you're doing off-road, why wouldn't you get a tire with superior rain performance and dry pavement traction?

 

[AmyPJ]

I'm a big fan of Michelin, and every time I'm lured into a different brand, I regret it (for all-season OR performance tires, which I had on my Jetta turbo 5 speed.) I always buy from Discount Tire now, as their customer service no matter where I go is exceptional. Right now, I have Michelin Defender XTs on my CX5, which are technically a M+S tire and I found that they do really well in snow and are excellent in rain. I'm of the thought that having a good all-season tire that will do well in that early-season snow storm that occurs before you've had a chance to switch to the snow tires is not a bad thing.

As for budgeting, buy when they are on sale as Phil mentioned above. My experience is that for a high-quality tire, you'll be closer to $700+ out the door, which includes taxes and mounting, etc.

 

[scott43]

Michelin make great tires.

 

[Corgski]

Skip the "all-season" tires. You already have good cold weather tires. Get summer tires. There are parallels with skiing. Think a groomer ski and a soft snow ski, not an all-mountain ski and a powder ski. Lessons and track time are similarly parallel.

The increase in performance in summer is like the increase in winter. It is easy to justify, what is your insurance deductable? How is your physical safety worth?

We have all had "close calls" were a panic stop or maneuver just barely avoided an accident. If you avoided that car in front of you by a foot with your all-seasons, you might have avoided it by 10 feet with summer tires. If you hit the car or slid off the road and totaled the car with all seasons, you might have just driven away with grippy summer tires.

The contact patch is about the size of your hand. Anything you can to do to make those four hands more effective is money in the bank.

I'll agree depending on context. If you are driving the high speed heavy traffic you can get on freeways around cities, sure. A car that may drive 3000 miles in the summer on relatively calm roads, not so obvious. At that point it may be reasonable to ask if alternatives are available. It is always dangerous to drive in snow with all seasons, one cannot say the same with winter or all seasons in summer.

 

[Monique]

I'm of the thought that having a good all-season tire that will do well in that early-season snow storm that occurs before you've had a chance to switch to the snow tires is not a bad thing.

It is always dangerous to drive in snow with all seasons, one cannot say the same with winter or all seasons in summer.

Bingo.

 

[Monique]

@Philpug - I wonder if you could rename this thread "How much should I expect to pay for decent all season tires?" ... which is really what I meant. I think the thread title as I wrote it is a little confusing and silly (budgeting isn't really a car topic)

 

[pete]

One note on my local Discount Tire .. had them mount winter tires I picked up at Tire Rack and the sales guy said he'd match their price, so my next tire purchase was with him. Given there's a Tire Rack in Denver it may be your Discount Tire will match too.

DT has sales all the time, their Black Friday sale is one, remember too if you wish to sign up for their Credit Card, you can get another $60 off.

I've like our Michelin Premier LTX .. but they do get pricer. I've found the rankings and reviews on Tire Rack useful as too Consumer Reports (but CR don't test a wide gamut of tires), my spouse has Pirelli P7s and I've liked those a lot, but they have some mixed reviews with many saying they get noisy as they age.

As @Talisman noted, extra cost for the performance is quickly forgotten, I used to worry but found comfort that my spouse and kids ride a "better" tire.

My thought is I'd expect the newest released tire as 'better" if they had new tech rolled into them including tread pattern and compounds. Compounds have greatly improved. My truck, which I run winters on recently got Sumitomo tires for 3 season ride. Not promoting "newer" brands but budget wise they were "cheap" while still having performance in my opinion that is on par with tires $60 bucks more/per.

 

[Philpug]

Tires are like ski bindings, it is very easy to under buy yet very hard to over buy. Tires are the msot important safety feature on our cars, tehy are what hold us to the ground. None of the other safety features work unless our tires do their job.

 

[Monique]

Tires are like ski bindings, it is very easy to under buy yet very hard to over buy.

But as we see above, it's still not simple. Best traction in the summer: summer tires. But what if you might encounter snow squalls (or more) before you've swapped to your winters? Add to that occasional dirt roads or easy jeep trails, and maybe all seasons are a better bet, no?

 

[cantunamunch]

But as we see above, it's still not simple. Best traction in the summer: summer tires. But what if you might encounter snow squalls (or more) before you've swapped to your winters? Add to that occasional dirt roads or easy jeep trails, and maybe all seasons are a better bet, no?

Precisely why I was asking for baselines: summer traction, rain traction, how much of either one gives up for edge bite in loose terrain, for lower road noise, and so forth. Essentially we need a rain tire thread and a summer tire thread - counterparts to the already existing snow tire thread and hybrid tire thread.

Brand discussion is not particularly useful - most brands make tires for most price points, and a price point tire is a rubbish tire if one underbuys for the application.

 

[Monique]

Brand discussion is not particularly useful - most brands make tires for most price points, and a price point tire is a rubbish tire if one underbuys for the application.

Right, which gets back to my first question, of what is an appropriate price for good tires? Must I really buy in the highest price tier, or is there a sweet spot, as with computer technology and bicycle components, where you get 90% of the benefit at 75% of the price? That sort of thing.

 

[cantunamunch]

Eventually, it does get back there, yes. I just don't like jumping to price (how much) before I know what.

Way too easy to get trapped into commodity pricing (Hey, I spent $800 on these, they must be good) or into believing review halos (Hey, these get 5 stars on Tire Rack, I'm sure they'll be fine in a dusty windstorm/deluge/whatsit) or into upselling oneself (Hey for another $150 per tire I can have "the best")

 

[Monique]

Eventually, it does get back there, yes. I just don't like jumping to price (how much) before I know what.

Way too easy to get trapped into commodity pricing (Hey, I spent $800 on these, they must be good) or into believing review halos (Hey, these get 5 stars on Tire Rack, I'm sure they'll be fine in a dusty windstorm/deluge/whatsit) or into upselling oneself (Hey for another $150 per tire I can have "the best")

But my whole question is about price! Because my need is to answer the question "How much should I carve out of my budget for tires?", rather than "I want to buy tires Right Now (or even in the next year)."

Unanswerable?

I think Phil said that my ballpark number is $600. Yes/no?

 

[Philpug]

Right, which gets back to my first question, of what is an appropriate price for good tires? Must I really buy in the highest price tier, or is there a sweet spot, as with computer technology and bicycle components, where you get 90% of the benefit at 75% of the price? That sort of thing.

How much a decent tire should be is like asking how much should decent car (or skis) cost? Yes, there are some different price points for sure but spending more does not always get each individual the best value for their application. It sounds like you are lookign for a three season tire since you will have snows and a three season tire that can handle the occasional ability to work as a four season one.

 

[x10003q]

But as we see above, it's still not simple. Best traction in the summer: summer tires. But what if you might encounter snow squalls (or more) before you've swapped to your winters? Add to that occasional dirt roads or easy jeep trails, and maybe all seasons are a better bet, no?

These are the reasons to go with all seasons. One snow squall with summer tires and you might be looking at a problem. Summer tiers would be the choice if you were tracking your Outback and looking for tenths of a second in the corners.

 

[François Pugh]

How much to budget? Just plug your tire size into Costco and price up 4 Michelin Pilot Sport tires. The A/S 3+ is a good enough summer tire for most purposes (and may be the only one that fits your car - Costco folk are funny about installing tires that aren't in their "fitment charts"), but if you're a control freak, you may want to upgrade to one of the other Pilot Sport tires. Bonus - it's not a disaster if you get caught in a late or early snowstorm.